Microsoft Rolls Out Smarter Chat Sync For Skype

Last October, Microsoft’s Skype promised a number of updates to its chat message syncing, and it looks like the service has now delivered on these promises.

For the longest time, chat syncing had been an annoying issue on Skype, as the mobile app would often send you a bunch of alerts for messages you’d already read on your desktop. The Skype team has announced that those days are over. Skype chats are now synced across all your Skype-enabled devices. Besides hopefully clearing up all of those unnecessary alerts, this means you should be able to easily scroll back on your mobile phone to see the chats you had on your laptop earlier that day.

With this update, Skype is also now ensuring that your messages get delivered to your contacts even if you send them while they’re offline. That’s often been an issue with using Skype chats across different time zones. If your contact wasn’t online when you sent the message and then you turned off your computer, chances were your chats would only arrive after you turned your computer back on. Now, Skype says, “you can have peace of mind” that these messages will arrive.

These new features are now available to all Skype users. As Microsoft has been quietly rolling these updates out over the last few weeks, there’s a good chance that you’ve already noticed some changes.

Looking ahead, the Skype team plans a number of other enhancements to the chat experience. The most important is ensuring that you only get notifications on the device you are actively using. Say you are on your desktop and using Skype there, soon, you will not get additional notifications on your tablet and phone as well. In addition, the team plans to ensure that your Favorites list will sync across all your Skype-enabled devices.